It's pretty difficult as an artist to feel like I'm good enough or being productive enough. I find that it's a constant balancing act to keep that river of self doubt at bay. The best I can ever hope to do is keep it pinned down, and keep moving forward.

Here is the color final. Florence Welch in all her glory.

I always do a black and white image and add color digitally. A little easier to control dramatic lighting that way.

And here's the black and white sketch I started with. I sculpted a mini version of the bird and took some photos of it in water to get the basic shape and lighting. I know a bit a about human anatomy, but it's a little different on birds!

And here we have the finished product. This was printed about 44x60" onto canvas and stretched- probably the largest project I've ever worked on. I spent all of the compositing phase flirting with Photoshops file size restriction, but all things considered it wasn't too painful.

A few people said this end result was a little dark and unexpected, but it IS a character I dreamed up in high school, and the only thing more dramatic than the me of the present was teenage me. Basically, it's meant to be an acidic, black slime type life form that's hollowed out a marble statue to give itself a more solid form. As it moves, the marble cracks and gives it a greater range of motion. Something like that!

I don't do printmaking often (mostly because I don't have a press, or access to one) but occasionally I'll get the urge to do a little linoleum printing because a wooden spoon is almost as good as a press for this process. Sort of. This is my first big, two-block print and I'm super excited.

Potentially embarrassing but true, this is a redraw of what's more or less a high school OC. In original imaginings she had a top of some kind, and I briefly wondered if social media guidelines would require me to put little stars or something over her bits, but it looks like because this is a painting of a statue... I should be in the clear.

I've been sick for the past... almost week and a half... And I guess I'd like to thank a combination of love, soup and cough drops for the reduced amount of coughing these days. Now that I'm on the mend, you can count on more way drawing and a few more birds too.

When I had used colored pencil for my work, it was nearly impossible to get a true black or decent contrast without introducing other media. It can definitely be done, but a lot of smooth papers good for colored pencil work don't handle liquid well (ink or watercolor being the preferred add-on. You can use gouache, but black/dark gouache will always scan differently than shiny, waxy colored pencil). Switching to ink has been really good for the dramatic lighting I've been wanting to do.

I still don't consider myself very good with color- especially digital color despite how often I use it. But I came out of this was super pleased with everything about it. It was good for morale at the time- I was between semesters trying to keep up with making things, and moving out of my apartment on top of that. For that reason, it's also a pretty nostalgic piece for me.

This was a summer break project, and one that kind of set the tone for a TON of more recent work. Using parallel lines like this makes it easier to get even values with dye based ink, which soaks in pretty fast and can't be moved much once its down.

Honestly out of the three Samantha pieces, this one was my favorite. Partly because it was the most fun I'd had with textures up to this point, but also because it had the most digital intervention I guess? Adding or manipulating shadows has become super important in more current work.

This is the second of that series. One of my illustrations crushes Victo Ngai came in to our ink class to participate in the critique. She seemed to like my noir fish people enough, but was distracted by the previous crop of this image...

...In which the ceiling fan seemed to be... the source of drama. I guess it makes sense that that would happen with characters that can only stare upward, mouths agape. I did my best.

I took our friend from my previous post and continued using her for the next few pieces. This one, part of a series of three, was an assignment using two characters and three scenes... Which ended up being a super fun way to play around and find variety in repositioning existing elements.